To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Weekend Assignment #110: Recount a strange dream you've had recently. Any sort of strange dream is fine except the really explicit sex dreams. Because, you know, we're running a family show, here. Otherwise, they can be as weird as you want them to be.

Extra Credit: Name a favorite song with the words "dream" or "sleep" (or some variation of those words).

Well, I just went through the nightmare of reconstructing the templates of two ruined blogs - twice each, because Netscape ruined the internal links. Does that count?

I didn't think so.



Here's my problem--well, my other problem. I always, always do the Weekend Assignment on Thursday night, but the truth is that I don't remember any recent dreams at all. I remember waking up a lot last night, and feeling a little unwell, and that being part of the dreams. But I can't give you a single image or situation or anything at all other than that.

So here's what I'm going to do, in my borderline OCD way. I'm going to sleep on the couch right now, so as not to disturb John with my shenanigans. (I would have gone two hours ago if it weren't for the Blogger Template Emergency, but oh, well.) I'll set my phone to wake me during the night. Then I'll get up and make a brief report of any dream I can remember. If it doesn't work, I'll try again next time I wake up.



On my mark, get set, sleep!

8:19 AM. No luck. I couldn't remember any dreams at 4:15 or 4:30 AM, probably because I hadn't been asleep very long. A fire truck that pulled up through the alley to the house next door (this is real, mind you) was just one of several distractions keeping me awake.

Now I'm exhausted, and I have to go to work! The one thing I can tell you is that eventually I had one of my house dreams. I was living on (fictional) Stone Mountain Road, where the houses are supposedly huge, the model of gracious living. But our house wasn't that way at all. If anything, it was even more cramped than in real life. Usually I dream of the house in Manlius, only with secret rooms and my mom alive in a Schroedinger's Cat kind of way, which is to say that I don't want to examine her too closely to resolve the question. I don't remember either the extra rooms or my Mom from this morning's edition, but that doesn't mean they weren't there.

That's all. I'll try again tonight.

Saturday:

Okay, here's one, from some time this morning.

I was getting ready to fly home to somewhere from somewhere, possibly my dad's house, except that I don't think I was 49-year-old Karen Blocher or that he was my dad. I think there was a slight shift into fiction or alternate reality. Isn't there always, in my dreams? It took me a while to get around to digging up the ticket and checking the time of the flight. 10:38 PM. Late. Good - I had plenty of time.

Soon after that, I was at St. Michael's, where the Social Concerns committee and others were preparing to go on an overnight birdwatching camp out. Most of them were wearing quilted ecclesiastic garments for warmth. Since I wasn't going with them, Ila gave me communion.

I was concerned that some animal (hawk? snake? wildcat?) was after me, or the younger person I was earlier in the dream. Then I saw it - a smallish bird, lying near the birders, eyes open and alive and still.

It may have been at about this point that the phone rang, waking me. Turns out my co-pay on the stress test is $597. Yow!

Extra Credit: I love the mid-1960s experimentation of I'm Only Sleeping by the Beatles, especially John's ambigious lyrics. If he's only sleeping, how can he be waiting for a sleepy feeling? Oh, yeah, there's subtext, no question.

Karen


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